The beauty of bitcoin, in its unique status as the idealistic cryptocurrency, is that it never promised anything. Satoshi never tried to set an exchange rate with anything, never pegged, never said he'd provide any asset, product, guarantee, for any amount. Even monopoly money is based on the US dollar, and you can buy properties on the board with it, and they're symbols for actual real estate, have names from Atlantic City, get $200 for passing go, $2000 for landing on Boardwalk, everything in the game gives some tangibility to the paper.<p>With Bitcoin, there's absolutely nothing. It's only relative to itself, in that mining a block is worth 40 bitcoins, which are this divisible and no more, and there is a limit to how many there will ever be, 21 million. And a block is mined every ten minutes. That's it. Three parameters. Totally free-floating from the very beginning.